WRITING IN
1955, McDonald observed, "Even a casual examination of
party literature and studies will turn up many references to
parties as institutions. Like other terms we have noted,
institution as a term seems at first to refer to different
things depending upon who uses it." Later in the same work,
he says, "Despite the many casual references to parties as
institutions it is surprising that there is very little in
the way of explicit discussion of the significance of the
institution concept as applied to parties as social
formations" (1955, pp. 15-17).

Given today's
interest in comparing party politics in different countries,
contemporary writings are more explicit in discussing the
significance of the "institutionalization" of parties than
those McDonald described 25 years ago, although they may not
use the term itself. For example, Scott notes that in Latin
America "little real political party machinery exists at the
local level, and what does exist is seldom related directly
to a national party. Instead, a few local notables build
their own personalistic organizations for each election,
allying themselves with national leaders of so-called
national parties for reasons of power or material advantage"
(1966, p. 337). And Pye sees parties in Southeast Asia in
much the same light (1966). Huntington is one contemporary
scholar who deals explicitly with the term
"institutionalization" and who has labored at explicating
the concept. He defines institutions as "stable, valued,
recurring patterns of behavior" and says,
"Institutionalization is the process by which organizations
and procedures acquire value and stability." Huntington
proposes to measure the level of institutionalization for a
particular organization "by its adaptability, complexity,
autonomy, and coherence" (1965, p. 394). I agree essentially
with his definition of institutions in terms of "stable,
valued, recurring patterns of behavior," but I do not agree
with his proposed ingredients for measurement. For example,
I believe that a party can be highly institutionalized and
yet lack independence of other groups (Huntington's
"autonomy")--as the Labour Party in Great
Britain.

McDonald's
review of various definitions of institution results in a
position close to Huntington's: "What these definitions seem
to have in common is their emphasis upon institution as
stressing the regularity of action pattern, its nonpersonal
aspect, and the expectations that it creates. To regard
party as an institution would be in some measure to single
out for stress something that might be called the party way
of doing things, something that might be designated by the
phrase 'party politicking' in order to distinguish it from
other types of 'politicking' (1955, pp. 16-17). Although
Sartori does not refer explicitly to institutionalization,
it seems this is what he means in his concern about
"structured" and ''unstructured" parties, with structured
parties existing in the minds of their followers as
''abstract entities'' apart from their leaders (1968, pp.
281, 293).

Scarrow warns
political scientists against "reifying" the party in
political analysis (1967, p. 777; but see Ranney 1968a), yet
party participants often do reify the party in their
behavior, which is characteristic within an
institutionalized party. Thus, within our study, an
institutionalized party is one that is reified in the public
mind so that "the party" exists as a social organization
apart from its momentary leaders, and this organization
demonstrates recurring patterns of behavior valued by those
who identify with it. In the absence of sample survey data
on popular views of parties, we seek to measure or
"operationalize" the concept of institutionalization with
six basic variables:

Students of
parties widely regard a party's age as one measure of
institutionalization, with old parties considered to be more
institutionalized than new ones. We measure age by
determining the date of a party's founding or its "year of
origin." Because a party's history may be clouded by splits,
mergers, name changes, and related phenomena, there is often
a problem in estab